Seems to Me . . . Trey Gowdy

The public legal system has long been a traditional pathway to higher elected office. Former New York mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Guiliani is one of many who went on to bigger things after a career as a prosecutor. And now the Upstate’s own Trey Gowdy is clearly on that path.

Congressman Gowdy, who served as a prosecutor in the Spartanburg area for a number of years, has been selected by Speaker of the House John Boehner to chair the House Select Committee that will investigate the events at Benghazi and those following events as well. If there is a hotter political potato around, few would want to touch it.

Gowdy has earned this assignment with his tenacious, aggressive and pointed questioning of the various witnesses who have appeared before the existing House committee he serves on. Gowdy’s star has been on a steady upward trajectory since his election to the House, but this appointment is a major acceleration. Gowdy appears to be anything but naïve.

In fact, when I watch him on television, and he is on television a lot, I am reminded of the description in Julius Caesar of yon Cassius, with that lean and hungry look. And so I assume that he has weighed the possibility that Speaker Boehner, who has certainly heard the speculation that Gowdy might be considered for speaker, has put him in a situation where he might be a spectacular success, or a dismal failure. I suspect that Gowdy is willing to take his own fortune in his own hands and let it play out as it will.

Speaking to a local civic group in Anderson Monday, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham called Gowdy “the best man in the entire Congress for the job”. Graham called him tenacious, determined and well respected by members of both parties. He also said that Gowdy will not make the issue a political football. “Trey simply wants answers, and I expect he will get them,” said Graham.

Fellow House member from the Upstate Jeff Duncan called Gowdy a bulldog and expressed his full confidence in the outcome of the Select Committee investigation. Democrats, of course, along with the leftist media, are already playing down the investigation, saying that Benghazi happened over two years ago and should be forgotten.

There are few sights available on television these days that are funnier than leftists talking heads and Democrat politicians whining about the Republicans playing politics with an issue. How long did Dems and Obama blame George Bush for everything from Katrina to the pathetic economic “recovery” that Obama has engineered?

But this time, the stakes are high. The political future of the next Queen of the Left is on the line. Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State at the time of Benghazi, has already shot herself squarely in the foot by snapping at one hearing that the death of the four Americans really didn’t matter anymore.

Now, she faces the very real prospect of being subpoenaed and questioned under oath. Lying to a House Select committee is a crime, and Eric Holder won’t be there to hold Ms. Clinton’s hand. The game has definitely changed as far as truth and consequences is involved.

I’m not much of a betting man, but I’d wager a few shekels that Trey Gowdy’s aggressive style will put more heat on Hillary than those flames at the Benghazi consulate created. It will be fascinating to see how well she stands up to it.